Science

• We are a community of learners, including students, staff and parents who work together.
• Inquiry is the key to education.
• Individuals are constantly changing, and learning continues throughout life.
• Citizenship involves service and active participation.
• Keeping pace with technological advances and learning about and accepting other cultures is essential to preparation for the future.

Our curriculum includes not only a sequential list of topics covered in each class or grade level, but a listing of “big ideas” and “essential questions”,  activities, assessments, labs, links to Ohio Education Standards and resources.   They are meant to provide a new teacher or a teacher new to a class specific guidance for inquiry studies, ways to reach out to include community in school activities or to perform activities that can relate to community issues and differentiated instruction.  Technology standards have been considered and included in specific units, so that the teacher brings in age-related skills at just the right time.

In preparation for this curriculum writing, National Science Education Standards were also reviewed, and the curriculum coordinator for science attended several curriculum seminars given by curriculum experts at the 2007 National Science Teachers Association national conference.  Most science teachers at each school level were involved in the writing of this curriculum, ensuring familiarity and adding more expertise to the process.

It is our goal to not only meet the basic requirements of state and national science education standards, but to exceed them by providing our teachers with an easily accessible and revisable curriculum that dovetails with the most current and successful strategies in science education.  This curriculum is designed to be constantly modifiable as necessary, removing topics as they become outdated or covered at different grade levels, adding activities that reach out to a more diverse student population or are more rooted in current events, and enriching with new computer applications.  Being electronic, this curriculum is accessible not only to teachers and administrators, but to interested students, parents and community members.